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dominion of his ignorance, superstitions, fears and passions--you will
always find that they are men who have lived upon the lofty summits of
the Spirit, and therefore have been seers of the future and have seen
"those things which must be hereafter."

Every high-minded man has always lived in the future. Take the
sovereign prophet of the ancient faith. The world about him is dark
and desolate; Israel's powers are at the ebb; the great faith that she
has inherited is degraded, sensualized, formalized, buried under a
debris of priestcraft, infidelity, idolatry and corruption; and yet
this prophet stands upon the hills and dreams--dreams against the
present, dreams through all the darkness environing him--and sees the
day when the faith of Israel shall be the faith of the world; when the
law of Israel shall dominate the conscience of the world; when the
Savior of Israel shall be the Savior of the world, and when the Jehovah
of Israel shall be the Jehovah of the world. Standing high, his soul
soaring, thinking lofty thoughts, he beholds Israel in glorious
perspective as the nation that shall lead man from bondage to liberty,
from darkness to light. Or think again of the life, the history, the
hope of Jesus, and behold in Him a perfect illustration of this truth;
this truth that there is an intimate relationship between high living
and high thinking, high doing, high willing and the vision of the
future. What right had Christ to hope at all? What right had He to
think of a Kingdom of God that was going steadily to conquer and take
possession of this earth? What right had He to think that His Gospel
would come to be the regnant gospel over the minds of men? What right
had He to think that His own beautiful spirit would prevail over the
perverse and rebellious will of society? What right had he to think
that the world would ever come to accept His marvelous beatitudes as
truth? What right had He to believe that the cross would ever be a
universal symbol of salvation? Judged from the near point of view, by
immediate results, by the facts that were right before His eyes,
history records no more conspicuous and terrible failure than the life
of Jesus. A Savior, and yet disbelieved in by the people; a Savior,
and yet scorned by the multitude; a Savior, and yet called a "wine
bibber" and a "glutton;" a Savior, and yet humiliated and degraded; a
Savior, and yet dying ignominiously upon the cross. Where is there any